Cabotage at Twenty-Three: The Fund Has Opened, the Money Has Not Moved
Nigeria reserved its coastal and inland trade for indigenous operators in 2003. The Coastal and Inland Shipping (Cabotage) Act created the framework and, with it, the Cabotage Vessel Financing Fund — a revolving facility built from a two per cent levy on cabotage trade earnings, intended to put Nigerian shipowners in a position to buy the vessels the law reserved work for.
The levy was collected for more than two decades. The fund was not disbursed.
What has moved this year
On 22 January 2026, the Minister of Marine and Blue Economy, Dr Adegboyega Oyetola, launched the CVFF application portal, opening the fund to applications under NIMASA’s administration.
The published terms are specific. Loans carry interest of 6.5 per cent with a repayment period of eight years, and the process was designed to run in 70 to 80 days. NIMASA administers the fund and operates a Cabotage Secretariat Unit, but it does not lend directly: disbursement runs through a panel of twelve appointed Primary Lending Institutions, including the Bank of Industry, which assess applicants, disburse approved facilities and manage the loans thereafter.
In April, Oyetola announced that President Bola Tinubu had approved the commencement of disbursement.
Where it stood in July
By early July, 136 days after the portal opened, the position was as follows. A NIMASA board member, Iroghama Ogbeifun, said 70 applications had been received through the agency’s Cabotage Services Department, of which 20 had passed screening and were undergoing processing by the Primary Lending Institutions.
Twenty of seventy is not a disbursement record. It is a screening record. Coverage at the time described disbursement as stalled, and NTMR has not identified any public confirmation since of funds actually reaching a shipowner’s account for the acquisition of a vessel.
NIMASA has said it would release its portion of the funds within 72 hours of all conditions being met, with the lending institutions disbursing immediately thereafter. That undertaking concerns the last step. The bottleneck, on the available evidence, sits earlier — in eligibility screening and in the credit assessment carried out by the banks.
The other reforms running alongside
NIMASA has forwarded proposed amendments to the National Assembly intended to close gaps in the Cabotage Act and widen access to the fund beyond vessel owners to other qualified indigenous operators.
On enforcement, the agency has launched an initiative it calls Operation Zero Tolerance, directed at compliance with cabotage regulations by both foreign and local operators, and has stated that only compliant operators will be eligible to benefit from the fund.
What cannot be established from public sources
Three things a status check on cabotage ought to be able to state, and cannot.
The size of the fund. It is widely reported at around 700 million dollars. NTMR has not seen an audited public statement of the balance, and the figure has been contested before — the House of Representatives previously demanded an audited statement of all monies accrued to the fund.
The waiver position. The Act permits waivers where no wholly Nigerian-owned, Nigerian-built or Nigerian-crewed vessel is available for a given trade. How many waivers have been granted recently, to whom and in what categories, is not a matter of current public record.
Indigenous tonnage itself. There is no current published figure for the tonnage under Nigerian ownership and flag operating in the cabotage trade, which is the only measure that would show whether twenty-three years of the regime has built a fleet.
What NTMR will follow
The questions are narrow and answerable. How many of the twenty applications have converted into disbursed facilities. What the banks are declining on. Whether the Cabotage Act amendments progress. And whether any of it produces vessels under Nigerian flag.
Shipowners, applicants and lending institutions are invited to share their experience of the CVFF process. Write to editor@nt-mr.com.